Re:Decidim: Free Open-Source participatory democracy for cit...
by notahacker on Sunday January 20, 2019 @09:07AM
(#18953085)
Polls aren't going to be a pretty close reflection of what a community thinks except in the exceptional circumstances that people that have jumped through hoops to register for a politics website are broadly representative of the type of people who actually lived there. (Make a "vouch for" system and you pretty much guarantee an echo chamber dominated by the best organised local political faction). And small, local websites don't need farms to attract trolls and see trolls drive out the non-trolls.
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Re:Decidim: Free Open-Source participatory democracy for cit...
by barandiaran on Sunday January 20, 2019 @12:35PM
(#18954246)
Polls aren't certainly the best possible reflection of what a community thinks if there is no perfectly representative a sample of participants. But it can be a good aproximation. Electing representatives is a kind of poll, so is HN itself. Participants vote here and there, factions balance out, you get some unstable equilibria that does the job of reflection part of what a community thinks and it often helps a community take better decisions than what a few (interested and absolutely politically factioned) politicians usually do.